These prose sketches and stories are a swirling kaleidoscope
of memory and fantasy, in which the most concrete and
telling details of everyday experience swirl around a quest
for the meaning of individual and social life. (Elderberry
Press, 2011)

“Invaluable for reminding readers of the complexity
within the antiwar movement. Robbins has composed an
anthology with remarkable diversity in points of view,
with due attention to resisitance to the Vietnam War
within the military and by veterans, and with respect for
the political capacities of everyday citizens.”– H-Net

“This is an outstanding collection of writings by
anti-Vietnam war activists that gives a vivid sense of
the range of principles and passions that motivated one
of the largest and most influential social movements in
American history. We hear from scholars and soldiers,
senators and students, clergy, journalists,
conscientious objectors, grassroots organizers and
national mobilizers, some well-known and others from the
rank-and-file of the movement. The result is a powerful
compilation that should find a place on the reading
lists for many courses on the Vietnam War, peace and
justice, or the United States in the 1960s.”
– William A. Joseph, professor of political
science, Wellesley College and editor of Introduction to
Comparative Politics, 4th Ed.

“There is no other book quite like this one and
its importance has only grown over the years. We need to
listen to these voices for they mirror a huge number of
American lives. One is grateful for this sorrowful and
wonderful record.” –
Gloria Emerson, foreign correspondent for The New York
Times in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972 and the author of
National Book Award winner, Winners & Losers

“Peace Not Terror captures the voices of today’s
leading thinkers and activists in the U.S. peace
movement. The collection of essays is as varied and powerful
as the reasons why it is imperative to do away with our
culture of militarism in order to embrace peace. This book
will affirm and strengthen the position of the antiwar
reader, and will challenge those who still believe in war as
a viable means to attain peace. It is a brilliant book, and
an absolute must read." – Camilo
Mejía, Iraq War veteran and resister, member of Iraq
Veterans Against the War, and the author of Road from ar
Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilo
Mejía

“In Peace Not Terror, Mary Susannah Robbins
performs an important public service. By editing and
publishing this collection of essays, Robbins not only
brings together the voices of the antiwar movement in one
user-friendly volume, but she reminds us of the movement's
startling scale and diversity. In this book we hear from
scholars and statesmen, victims and veterans. Most of all,
we hear from patriots – people who know that
preemptive war, the backdoor draft, torture, indefinite
detention, and extraordinary rendition are
un-American. Every citizen should read this book.”
– Michael S. Foley, author of
Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the
Vietnam War

“This remarkable and indispensable book against
U.S. militarism includes essays by Noam Chomsky, Howard
Zinn, Staughton Lynd, Dave Dellinger, and many others,
including Iraq War veterans. These invaluable members of the
peace movement show in their writings – and by their
own personal stories – the way out of the cycle of
violence that the U.S. military response to the events of
9/11 has created. From William Sloane Coffin's sermon on
love delivered the Sunday after 9/11, to Jeff Jones, former
Weatherman and now environmental actvist, who writes of the
need to eliminate our oil consumption to prevent both global
warming and war in the Middle East, these essays form a
moving and inspiring guide to peace on this earth.” – Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A
Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

“We veterans know that this war is not being
sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with
ther liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has
everything to do with the subjugation and domination of
these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and
strategic interests.” –
Matthew Howard, USMC, Chair of the Vermont Chaper of Iraq
Veterans against the War

“Mary Susannah Robbins’s powerful book is the
answer to those who ask what happened to the antiwar
movement. The voices of that movement, past and present,
speak passionately in the pages of Peace Not Terror, moving
the reader to pay attention, to act and to speak out. It is
essential reading in these dark and dangerous days, for it
insists not only on the possibility but the necessity of
protest.” – Marilyn Young,
professor of history at New York University and author ofThe
Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990

Earth, Fire, and Water: A Memoir of the Sixties and Beyond
(Lexington Books, 2008)

“I am enormously impressed with the quality of the
writing and the extraordinary portraits she has drawn of the
people who crossed her life's path.” – Howard Zinn

This memoir chronicles the life of Mary Susannah Robbins
– poet, activist, and devoted daughter of famous
mathematician Herbert E. Robbins. Her antiwar activism,
beginning with her experiences during the Vietnam War and
continuing into the present with the Iraq War, has given her
a perspective from which to tell a unique story of American
life.

Her childhood having been spent surrounded by such
luminaries of the twentieth century as Albert Einstein,
Aldous Huxley, and Alan Lomax, Robbins writes of the early
influence that her parents and their colleagues had on her
later call to activism in the 1960s. She discusses the
relationships that guided her to become involved with
various antiwar movements. Her personal reflections within
this book form a powerful tribute to the many lives that
have touched and been touched by her.

Against the Vietnam War
and
Peace Not Terror
are collections of essays by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Staughton
Lynd, Dave Dellinger, William Sloane Coffin, H. Bruce Franklin, David Harris,
David Cortright, Jane Bond Moore, Jeff Jones, JoAnn Wypijewski, and Vietnam War
and Iraq War veterans.

Robbins runs an editorial service. Among books she has edited that have been
successfully published are
Impressionists Side By Side
by Barbra Ehrlich White (Knopf) and
Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong: Cultural Illiteracy and the Case
for Character Education
by William Kirk Kilpatrick (Simon & Schuster).

Robbins has prints and paintings in The Fogg Museum, The Smith College Museum of
Art, The Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, in the estates of Meyer Schapiro and
Victor Weisskopf, and in private collections all over the world.
View a gallery of her art work.

Robbins graduated from Harvard and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from
Boston College. She has taught in the English Departments of Vassar College and
Boston College.